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An old man answered his door one morning and a stranger in overalls said
he'd come to enlarge the house.
"I'll be quite cozy with two rooms," the stranger
announced.
The home owner glanced at the tools poking from the stranger's pockets, then laughed: "I prefer the compact egos of small homes that don't grope for grandeur," and he closed his door.
"But it's all planned!" the visitor protested.
Bemused, the homeowner waited at a window for the stranger to leave, but instead he followed the sidewalk to the empty half lot on the side of the house.
At another window the old man watched the visitor sight along a yardstick to measure the lot for the addition he'd proposed. The elder chuckled that folly is a tragedy that unfolds to no future, and he went to perk some coffee.
Back at his window before long, he discovered the stranger swinging a weed cutter, apparently pantomiming the clearing of the lot. Uneasy now, the home owner went out, rasped that the developer's antics would lure faeries, and insisted he leave. The visitor insulted the complaint by turning his back and quickening his cutter.
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